A Search Engine Explanation

With the widespread growth of the World Wide Web a specially designed tool to search through the information available was developed called the search engine. Using both algorithms and human editing the search engine will present results organized in a list consisting of web pages, information, links, and images. These results are viewed by the user after inputting a keyword or keyword phrase in to the search engines search field.

The search engines stores millions of pages of data available on the web and then uses different processes to deliver the most relevant data required by the users. Web crawling, indexing and searching are different processes that are used for the purpose and the order remains the same. The web crawler which is also known as the web spider works by scanning all the visible links. The web crawler, working as an automated web browser, examines all the pages and takes a decision on the indexing of the pages.

Words found inside the pages are extracted from the description and allocated appropriate meta tags. Meta tags are also taken from contents the webpage itself to establish its relevance. Data from the sites is collected, indexed and stored to be retrieved when it’s needed.

All the search engines work on more or less the same principle. Google stores the source pages, also called cache, of all the web pages along with information available on the webpage itself. AltaVista differs slightly in operation as it stores everything that a web page has on offer.

Search engine users normally input a keyword or key phrase into the search field. The engine will search for their particular keyword and key phrase on the World Wide Web. The search engine index will provide an organized list of results with the best matched web pages. A short summary of each webpage describing the contents is provided along with the list.

All the search engines look to enhance their performance by ensuring that they deliver exactly what the user looks for. The problem is accentuated by the abundance of web pages containing the keyword or the keyword phrase. However, by using web crawlers and indexing, search engines manage to filter all the sites that are irrelevant to the search being made even if it has the keywords. They have created their own unique processes for examining different web pages and their contents.

Increasingly search engines have been implementing a page ranking system in which each page’s descriptions, keywords and content are scanned for relevancy to the inputted keyword and their index. Pages with higher ranks get seen more often at the top of the list. If a site is linked to a high ranking website that site receives a vote that increases its ranking.